Our Cream

2024 Author: | . Last modified: 2024-01-10 03:12

The Ralle Factory In 1843, a French citizen, Alphonse Ralle, opened a perfume factory in Moscow, on Vyatskaya Street, and thus laid the foundation for the Russian cosmetics industry. Production grew rapidly. In 1856, a trading house was formed under the name "Partnership" A. Ralle & Co ". In 1865, at an exhibition of manufactory products held in Moscow, an expert commission classified the factory as the first category for its extensive production and excellent properties of goods. At the peak of its success, the Ralle factory produced soaps, lipsticks, powders and as many as 675 types of perfumes, and was one of the suppliers of the imperial court. After the revolution of the 17th year, the "Partnership of the highest perfumery Rolle and Company" ceased to exist. The Bolsheviks nationalized the enterprise, renaming it State Soap Factory 4 and then the State Soap and Cosmetic Factory Svoboda. The perfumery production was transferred to the Novaya Zarya factory, and since then Svoboda has continued to produce hygiene products, but already for the broad masses. Every inhabitant of the post-Soviet space has come across the products of this factory at least once. You can distinguish it by its characteristic names. These are “Coniferous” and “Pearl” toothpastes, “Effect” foot cream and “Silicone” for hands. A line of popular soaps - "Bannoe", "Velvet" and "Special" - are also made here. All this is made in Moscow on Vyatskaya Street, in a building that is now considered an architectural monument. It produces soaps, cosmetics and toothpaste, as well as plastic and aluminum tubes. The "Svoboda" association produces such tubes filled with all kinds of substances a million a day, and delivers not only across Russia, but also, for example, to the Baltic countries. Joining a group of eleventh graders, we begin our tour from the factory hall, where pictures of employees and legendary product samples are hung everywhere - for example, “Detskoe” cream and soap with a puppy and a kitten on the package. “Everything is done at our plant: shampoos, soaps, toothpastes, paints, creams for adults and children, women and men,” says Elena Rodina, who leads the tour, “Who can tell what men's creams exist in nature? - For shaving and after shaving! - Confidently answers the teacher accompanying the schoolchildren. - Quite right! And by the way, the percentage of men who spend more and more money on personal care is growing every year! - responds Rodina. The set of creams for women is much more diverse, but in the brewhouse where we are going, they are all prepared using the same technology. There is a separate container with water next to the workshop. Moscow tap water contains many minerals, in particular, calcium and magnesium, and is considered too hard, therefore, for the production of cosmetics, it is specially softened, otherwise microscopic abrasive particles can get into the cream, and the skin does not need this at all. To the factory, as well as to city apartments, water goes for many kilometers through pipes, which can be old or rusty. Therefore, water, according to Elena Rodina, also undergoes mechanical treatment in huge industrial filters. Through a pipe, water enters the brewhouse - it is clean, hot, and there are large closed vats - cooking reactors - in which cream is cooked at a temperature of 60 to 80 degrees Celsius. A woman in a snow-white work suit stands on the stairs near a vat somewhere under the ceiling and takes notes in a notebook. - All the components and conditions for the preparation of the cream are recorded by the technologist in the technological chart, - Elena explains, - and the operators in the shop closely monitor compliance with all requirements …Incorrectly cooked cosmetic cream cannot be corrected, it can only be disposed of. There are six cooking reactors in the workshop: one is designed for two tons of cosmetic mass, the rest - for one ton. Under the semicircular lid of the reactor there are two stirrers and a special nozzle - a homogenizer. The finished cream should be completely homogeneous, without clots and lumps, and a homogenizer is needed to bring the cosmetic mass to a uniform consistency. From the point of view of physics, a cream is an emulsion, that is, a solution of small drops of liquid in another liquid. - There are two types of emulsions: "water in oil" and "oil in water". Basically, most creams are emulsions, but not all emulsions are creams. All creams are based on fats and water, '' explains Elena Khlystova, dermatovenerologist, researcher at the Moscow Scientific and Practical Scientific Center for Dermatovenereology and Cosmetology of the Moscow Department of Health. However, according to her, there are no suspension creams. A suspension is a mixture in which a solid is dispersed in the form of minute particles in a liquid. But such particles are unable to penetrate the skin. So if the cosmetics contain particulate matter, it is most likely a scrub. To mix immiscible phases like oil and water, creams use emulsifiers, which is why the process of boiling the cream is called emulsification. At the beginning, middle and end of this process, an employee of the testing laboratory during production takes the cream mass from the reactor for analysis. It must meet certain parameters in terms of density, viscosity, color, odor, acidity and content of microorganisms. Raw materials for cooking cream are fed into the reactor through a pipe. Some ingredients, for example, wax, enter the factory in solid form, so it is preliminarily melted in a special unit called “solid fatty raw material melting section.” The cooking process, depending on the composition, lasts up to several hours. When the emulsification is over, the finished mass is pumped into containers for temporary storage, and from there through pipes - down to the tube shop. There the cream is packed in tubes. We go down to the tube shop, passing by the soap production. The soap filling shop looks exactly as you can imagine: a spacious room with several conveyors, along which white bars float in endless rows to the place of packaging. The shop has a characteristic soapy smell, which is obtained from a mixture of aromas of three dozen names: from "Special" to "Russian Bath". How to put it in a tube "Svoboda" packs cream in tubes of two types - plastic and aluminum, which it independently produces both for itself and for other customers. So, in tubes from the Svoboda factory, for example, Vishnevsky's ointment is produced - a remedy popular in the USSR for treating wounds and other skin injuries. Making a plastic tube is quite simple. Plastic is loaded into a special apparatus, a long tape is pulled out of it, which is folded into a tube and cut into separate segments. To do this, special marks are applied to the plastic tape at regular intervals - red, black or green. There is an urban myth according to which these marks have some secret meaning. Allegedly, a black mark means that the toothpaste or cream consists entirely of synthetic components, and the green one means that the composition is completely natural. In fact, the factory employee explains, such marks are needed exclusively for the machine, which determines by them where to cut the plastic tube into segments for tubes. The photocell installed on it does not distinguish colors at all - all these colorful marks for it have shades of gray. Therefore, the mark can be of any color, but, as a rule, it is taken from the packaging design. Aluminum tubes are subjected to additional processing: they are varnished from the inside and heated in an oven to 480 degrees Celsius. The varnish is baked and a shiny polymer film is obtained - it protects the cream from contact with metal. Although aluminum is an inert metal and is extremely reluctant to enter into a chemical bond, manufacturers still continue to do so - they are reinsured. After internal processing, the tube is covered with white enamel on top, a pattern is applied on top of it - and the tube is ready. The cream is packed in tubes of different materials for a reason. If the cream contains more than 50% natural fats, it is placed in an aluminum tube. Fats are well oxidized from contact with oxygen, so the less air in the package, the better: the metal tube does not expand after pressing, which means there is no room for air in it. The finished tubes have one unsealed end, in this form and are sent to the department packaging, where the cream mass goes through the pipes. Laying out the cream on plastic and aluminum tubes has its own subtleties. The plastic holds its shape well, so the plastic tubes are simply placed in batches in a special transparent container, from where they go to be filled with cream. Before our eyes, a conveyor worker takes a box with tubes tightly packed in it in an upright position and at once pours them into a transparent container, where the previous batch is already coming to an end. From the container, the tubes are sent for filling with cream. This will not work with aluminum tubes - they are soft, they are easy to wrinkle, so the operator transfers the aluminum tubes to the tube receiver manually and one by one. If the tube is crumpled or just fell on the floor, it is written off as a scrap and placed in a special box. The tube is filled from the back of the cap, and then this end is sealed if it is plastic, or simply clamped if it is aluminum. The machine puts an expiration date and batch number on the label. Since aluminum is easily wrinkled, it is also packed in cardboard cases for sale. For schoolchildren with teachers, the excursion comes to an end: they go to the exit, hand over their caps to the cloakroom attendant, throw away their shoe covers and take selfies. And I go to the scientific center of the factory to find out what everything that we have just seen is made of. What it consists of The composition of the cream is quite simple: it is based on prepared water mixed with various oils, mainly vegetable oils - olive, sunflower, oil shea, sometimes animals (mink oil), as well as various extracts, for example, caviar, plankton, chocolate, etc. In this case, it depends on the components what function the cream will perform: moisturizing or nourishing. Moisturizing is useful for any skin. According to Elena Khlystova, a researcher at the 2nd Dermatovenerological Department of the Moscow Scientific and Practical Scientific Center for Dermatovenereology and Cosmetology of the Moscow Healthcare Department, this function in the cream is performed by fats (oils, lanolin, squalane, urea, waxes, glycerin) and low molecular weight hyaluronic acid, which binds and holding water molecules on itself. - Moisturizing components, first of all, help to restore the skin barrier, fastening the epidermal cells together and preventing the transepidermal loss of moisture in the skin, says Khlystova. But nutrition is necessary mainly for aging skin. The fact is that it retains its elasticity thanks to the collagen protein. It has a fibrillar structure and is similar to a spring. Thanks to him, the skin remains elastic. But with age, due to changes in hormonal balance and metabolic disorders, the production of collagen in the skin slows down. Therefore, nourishing creams, as a rule, are not intended to nourish the skin directly, but only to stimulate its metabolic processes, "push" it to produce additional collagen itself. Such stimulating substances include, for example, vitamins A, E and C. In particular, it is in the presence of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) that natural collagen synthesis occurs in the skin. The fruit acids in the cream help to cope with peeling, smooth the skin, relieve inflammation and have a slight peeling effect, explains Elena Khlystova. Creams also often contain extracts - pharmaceuticals obtained by extraction with solvents (alcohol, water, ether, glycerin and their mixtures) of medicinal substances from plant materials. Their effect is based on the action of the substances they contain. - For example, plant extracts contain natural isoflavones that stimulate metabolic activity and structural proteins of the skin - such as collagen, elastin and keratin, - says Khlystova, - due to which the depth of wrinkles is reduced, the elasticity and firmness of the skin increases, - in grape seed and pulp contains many active substances - polyphenols, which have a unique ability to prevent the formation of free radicals in the body (the main cause of early skin aging and cancer). In this case, the main thing to remember when using the cream is that it is pleasant to bacteria no less than to the skin. Therefore, contact of the cream with air and hands should be minimized. Canned creams look more aesthetically pleasing than a crumpled aluminum tube, but you need to climb into the can with your finger, and this is an extra reason to bring in germs. - Some manufacturers also attach a spatula to the can, but it still needs to be stored somewhere after use, and rinsed regularly. - says Elena, - in any case, creams cannot be stored for a long time. Usually the shelf life does not exceed six months, then toxins, fungal infections and other unpleasant things accumulate in the cream. Many are afraid of preservatives in cosmetics, but, according to Elena, it is absolutely impossible to do without them. Preservatives, however, are different. The Svoboda factory uses popular preservatives from the class of esters - parabens. Scientists agree that parabens are harmless to human health, hypoallergenic and do not lead to any negative health effects. Although there are several studies that have shown that high amounts of parabens are found in cancerous tumors in breast cancer, scientists have not been able to find reliable evidence for a causal relationship between parabens and cancer. - Parabens are permitted based on proven safety data. It is one of the few components that has been widely studied and approved in the food and pharmaceutical industry; decades of clinical research have confirmed that it is one of the broad-spectrum preservatives that inhibits both bacteria and fungi. A lot of hype around them is associated with the marketing wars of producers of raw materials and finished products, - says Veronika Smagina, head of the department of technology of chemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products of the Russian Chemical Technology University named after Mendeleev. If the packaging of cosmetics says "paraben-free", this does not mean that there are no preservatives at all, otherwise the cream will not be able to store for more than a few days. Other preservatives are also used at the Svoboda factory, for example, phenoxyethanol. "It is a mild preservative, it has a higher working concentration and less spectrum of action," says Smagina. But bronopol (2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol), which is also added here to the composition of some creams, according to the opinion specialist, the preservative is more "heavy" because of the bromine content. The use of Bronopol is prohibited, for example, in Canada. Another scary word that appears on the packaging of both cream and cookies is emulsifier. But there is nothing wrong with him either. The cream is made from oil and water, but since water molecules are polar, but oils are not, they cannot combine. Mixed water and oil will quickly separate, therefore an emulsifier is added to them - to obtain a stable emulsion. The most common emulsifier is lanolin, it is prepared from cold-pressed sheep wool. - Despite the fact that it is an emulsifier of natural origin, it is not so good for the skin, - says Elena Rodina, - lanolin has some comedogenic effect, that is, it clogs the pores and can cause blackheads if the skin is not cleaned properly. Therefore, the Svoboda Association mainly uses PEG-4 polyglyceryl-2 stearate, a common synthetic emulsifier derived from glycerin. It is completely harmless, which is confirmed by Veronika Smagina. Unfortunately, some other substances produced at the factory are also considered comedogenic: isopropyl palmitate and isopropyl myristate. “These outdated ingredients are now being phased out,” says Smagina. To reduce the side effects of cosmetics, you need to properly cleanse your skin at the end of the day and wash your face properly. That's right, from the point of view of cosmetology - not with your hands, but with a special sponge, and not with tap water, but with carefully filtered or boiled water, which is best stored in a special container. The desire of the modern urban consumer for everything "natural" and natural has caused a fashion for natural and organic cosmetics. This is cosmetics. containing ingredients of natural, mainly vegetable origin, and with preservatives approved for "green" natural cosmetics. There are many associations of manufacturers of such cosmetics in the world, as well as databases where you can check whether the cream on your shelf meets the "natural" or "organic" standards. - Now the basis of cosmetics is natural oils. The synthetic components remain, but they pass the strictest safety checks, says Elena Andreeva, head of the cosmetics laboratory of the Svoboda association. As for organic cosmetics, it is mainly a matter of certification. If the cream is labeled "organic", it means that the ingredients for it were grown, for example, in the fields without pesticides and fertilizers, and there must be a certain percentage of natural raw materials in the composition. The factory has a whole scientific center where new types and varieties of cosmetics are being developed. funds, and, according to Elena, its specialists notice certain trends in certain ingredients of creams - for example, sea buckthorn oil. It has been used in cosmetology for probably a hundred years, but suddenly two years ago it took off at the peak of popularity all over the world. Then came the fashion for chocolate and cocoa butter. Many ingredients come from the food industry, says Andreeva. There are also special ingredients, for example, caviar extract (usually from rare and expensive fish varieties). - The molecules in it are small and easily penetrate the skin, besides, the caviar is nutritious, which is also good. But caviar is not enough, and it is expensive to get it, so the cream is expensive, - says Elena Rodina. According to Elena Khlystova, products based on salmon caviar contain amino acids, omega-3, omega-6 fatty acids, vitamins and trace elements that serve as the basis for collagen production and have a pronounced antioxidant effect on cells - this is exactly what mature skin needs. less, using any cream, even the most expensive, you need to understand that it will not create a miracle with the skin. The cream is active only in the upper layer of the skin - the epidermis, while wrinkles, for example, are formed in the middle layer - the dermis. Cosmetics can nourish the skin and help it retain moisture. No cream is able to cope with the natural aging processes - unless it partially disguises it for a while.